Google's Blighty-based empire is set to expand, with the company renting double its current amount of office space in King's Cross, central London.
In early 2014 Google agreed to take 45 per cent of the 365,000 sq ft office space at 6 Pancras Square. It now plans to fill out the whole building.
The company's current UK …

Australia's Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has his eye on the revenues collected by multinational online ad platforms like Google.
Apparently raising a white flag on the government stopping multinationals from shipping profits offshore to avoid tax, Turnbull has floated the idea of levying Australia's goods and …

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has promised to tackle multinational internet outfits that divert profits to avoid big tax bills in Blighty.
The so-called "Google tax" crackdown will reportedly be a highlight of the thin-lipped, Number 11 occupant's final budget before the General Election, which takes place …

Worried Oompa-Loompas are questioning security guards and combing the wilds of Mountain View after it was discovered that Google has allowed a product, the Android Studio IDE, to escape from the Chocolate Factory's near-impenetrable Beta compound.
The production-ready code has been spotted in the wild here after spending 18 …

Developers who have built web apps that take advantage of the Google Earth geospatial imaging service have just 12 more months to make the most of them, because the online ad-slinger plans to shut down the Google Earth API next year.
According to a Friday blog post, Google will continue to fully support the Google Earth API …

Russia's answer to Google, Yandex, has filed an official complaint against the American ad giant to the Russian competition authorities.
Yandex claims the US ad slinger is abusing its position and forcing mobile phone manufacturers to include Google search on the home screen of all Android devices. The complaint comes as Yandex' …

Google's virtual reality headset Cardboard has now been shipped to 500,000 customers, after the ad giant unveiled the gadget earlier this year.
Mountain View's VR gear landed at its I/O event in San Francisco in June, when some wondered if Google was taking a playful dig at Facebook's hefty $2bn buyout of Oculus Rift by …

Google Compute Engine (GCE) users experienced a brownout over the weekend, after an incident that bears plenty of likeness to a worse outage that took down the service in February.
The February FAIL came about when “The internal software system which programs GCE’s virtual network for VM egress traffic stopped issuing updated …

Google wants to take a chunk out of Amazon's Glacier storage business with a cloud-based archive service that can start retrieving data in three seconds.
The Google Cloud Storage Nearline service, now in beta, charges one cent per GB per month for data at rest.
"Many of you operate a tiered data storage and archival process, in …

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are about to offload millions of shares that will net each billions in cash.
Don't panic, dear readers, at the prospect of Google's share price (and the balance of your pension fund) diving: the pair are offloading their holdings in line with an amended stock trading plan that is …

Google has turned on its namesake top-level domain (TLD) with the creation of 'nic.google' representing the internet giant's entry into the domain name market.
Currently the domain redirects to Google's registry page where it outlines the other internet extensions it has already won the rights to, including: .ads, .dad, .fly, . …

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has responded to critics in the media who claim the regulator dropped an investigation into Google after buckling under pressure from the White House and the powerful advertising giant.
Back in 2012, staff at the US watchdog accused Google of unfairly burying rivals in its search results, among …

Google is reportedly investigating how it can offer accounts to children.
The Information reports that The Chocolate Factory is considering a regime whereby parents can set up accounts for kids and control the Google services they are permitted to access.
Kids under 13 are currently not permitted to sign up for Google+. As your …

Google's botched another cloud patch.
The Chocolate Factory's cloud operations have had a tough time of things this year, suffering a network mess in February and then a brownout in early March.
Over the last couple of days the company's App Engine experienced “elevated 503 errors on <1% of applications for a typical duration …

In another attempt to get someone, anyone, spending time on Google+, the Chocolate Factory has abandoned its “real names only” policy.
The policy has been criticised for its entire existence. The company began deleting accounts that didn't pass its real-names test in 2011, without any particular consistency of enforcement. In …

Google has named the next four areas in the US to get its gigabit-a-second fiber broadband.
The advertising giant said on Tuesday it will next roll out high-speed connections to 18 cities in and around Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Raleigh-Durham, NC; and Nashville, TN.
Charlotte city officials had indicated they were expecting …

Apple is possibly looking to develop its own augmented reality headset.
Industry analyst Gene Munster speculates that Cupertino is brewing up its own device to compete with the likes of Google Glass.
"Based on conversations with industry contacts within the virtual and augmented reality spaces, we believe Apple has a small team …

Google has backed down on its frigid threat to tug filthy porno pics and raunchy grumble vids off Blogger.
The ad giant on Thursday said it will continue to allow randy netizens to post amateur smut, reversing an earlier decision forbidding X-rated blog posts unless they were deemed arty and acceptable to Mountain View's censors …

Google is making a bid for the enterprise with its new Android for Work program, which aims to give businesses more control over the apps and data that employees store on their smartphones.
"With a group of partners, we're helping businesses bring more devices to work by securing, managing and innovating on the Android platform …

Google has inked a major deal with mobile payment alliance Softcard that will see its Google Wallet payments system pre-installed on phones sold by American carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
The carriers will begin shipping the Google Wallet app later this year on mobes running Android 4.4 "KitKat" or higher, according to a …

Google will pay you for bugs you haven't even found yet under a new program to help soothe frustrated researchers struggling to find flaws in ever harder software and services.
The Vulnerability Research Grants described as cash with "no strings attached" will allow security bods to apply for US$3133.70 to begin bug hunting …

It took a $70m golden hello to entice Ruth Porat – Google's new chief financial officer – away from her role at Morgan Stanley.
According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the material terms of Ruth Porat's offer letter included not only an annual base salary of $650,000, but also a set of three grants …

Google Ventures has pumped $60m (£39m) into London-based music tech company Kobalt Music, which helps publishers keep tabs on streaming services such as Spotify.
The company has already received a stake from Michael Dell's private investment firm MSD Capital, with the latest funding adding to the princely sum of $66m (£43m) …

Google was far closer to being dragged into court by US watchdog the FTC than anyone previously believed, documents have revealed.
The Wall Street Journal has obtained and published an internal FTC report that accuses Google of wrongdoing, following a 2012 antitrust probe by the regulator into the company's dominance online. …

Google has rolled out five new functions aimed at beefing up the security, administration and sharing features of its Drive for Work cloud business suite and the equivalent education package.
Youtube video
"Since we launched Drive for Work 9 months ago, we've watched as more and more businesses moved to the cloud - and seen …

Google have announced that Ruth Porat, currently Chief Financial Officer at Morgan Stanley, will be joining the Mountain View management team as CFO.
Current CFO Patrick Pichette announced his retirement to go backpacking earlier this month. Google stated that he would be staying on board to "ensure an orderly transition, which …

Google's decided its Compute Engine and App Engine users need to know if their cloudy rigs are full of … bugs, by dropping a log (analyser) into the cloud.
The new Google Cloud Logging beta collects Compute Engine and App Engine logs and lets users perform the following tricks:
Ingest and view the log data, so that you can see …

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Google has been granted a patent on a device to detect when a person stinks – to help them evade others to avoid embarrassment.
We would like to say that this is a loose interpretation of a more complicated patent, but that really is all there is to it: the web ad giant wants to tell when you flat out reek and how you can dodge …

A hosted edition of LibreOffice is planned as a free and open alternative to Office 365 and Google Docs by year's end.
The suite would provide online editing and sharing of documents written using the free, open-source suite.
The Document Foundation said on Wednesday that LibreOffice contributor Collabora is working with …

Twitter has reportedly inked a deal with Google so its tweets are once again embedded in the advertising giant's search results.
Twitter has 284 million active monthly users, apparently, and claims to have 185 billion unique views of tweets outside its website. However, slower user growth has prompted the company to look for …

The European Commission is remaining tight-lipped about what was said in a meeting yesterday between Google supremo Eric Schmidt and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
A Commission spokesman would only confirm that the meeting had taken place, but would not reveal the substance. But that hasn’t stopped rampant …

Google has strongly opposed US government plans to expand federal powers to authorise remote searches of digital data - claiming in a letter the powers will weaken citizens' fourth amendment rights.
The right is the part of the US Constitution that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be …

Apple Safari-using Brits, who claim they were tracked by Google's adbots without permission, can sue Google in the UK, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales has ruled.
"This is a David and Goliath victory," said Marc Bradshaw, one of three people taking Google, a powerful advertising giant based in Mountain View, California, …

In the latest blow to Adobe's little-loved Flash graphics format, Google has begun nudging customers of its AdWords ad network to wean themselves off Flash by offering automatic conversion of Flash ads to HTML5.
"Over half of time spent online is now spent on mobile devices," the Google Ads team said in a Google+ post on …

An end to the four-year legal battle against Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe for alleged wage-fixing is in sight, with a judge having set a final hearing date for the proposed $415m (£270m) settlement.
Last month Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe offered to pay out $415m to make the case go away.
The companies made the new offer …

Google has confirmed that it has opened up its wallet to acquire the development team behind the mobile chat app Emu.
The web giant has not said what Emu's developers will work on at the Chocolate Factory, but we do know that the new jobs will not include maintaining any of the startup's products.
Members of the Emu team posted …

Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software.
The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today.
Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment.
So far more …

Three new emerging nations have been added to the list of places getting Google's budget phone version of Android.
Android One will now be available in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, although the promised launch in Pakistan - planned before Christmas - has been put back.
The three new countries add an audience of 200m to the …

If you sell digital goods on a website using Google Wallet to take payment, you have a little over three months to find an alternative.
The service is being “retired” on 2 March 2015 and will not be replaced. Google argues that there are enough alternative solutions, which might translate to mean “no one was using it”.
The …

After much debate and a seven-city tour of Europe, Google’s self-appointed advisory board has finally published its opinion on the so-called “right to be forgotten”.
Last May, Google was ordered to remove links to “outdated or irrelevant” information about a Spanish individual by the European Court of Justice. Since then, Google …

Google has reported a local file flaw affecting Windows 7 and 8.1 32 and 64 -bit systems in the third vulnerability dropped since a spat with Microsoft erupted last week.
The vulnerability that allowed a malicious Server Message Block version 2 server to force a client to open arbitrary local files was marked high severity by …

It’s a small, yellow, earwig-like creature* that feeds on … no, wait, it’s Google’s new real-time language translation app.
Although sadly not an actual Babel fish, the Chocolate Factory’s latest upgrade to its Google Translate app does mean you can “instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language”.
From …

Updated
Google says security biz MCS Holdings has created unauthorized SSL certificates for some Google-owned websites.
Anyone with these dodgy certificates could, in theory, set up a web server that masquerades as a legit Google site, and redirect people to the fake site by hijacking their DNS. Chrome and the latest Firefox web …

Google's given Microsoft Office an awkward hug by refreshing Drive so it plays nice with desktop applications.
Drive is Google's share 'n' sync offering and integrates tightly with its apps: drop a document into Drive and you can read or edit it in the Docs in-browser word processor. That tool's not to everyone's tastes and …

Podcast
speaking_in_tech Greg Knieriemen podcast enterprise
This episode of El Reg's talkative techcast is hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Tuck in.
This week the team is back beating up on Google, and gloating over the end of Google Glass, or rather its "graduation" (“a bullet to the ****ing head”). It looks …

Google is pushing out version 5.0.1 of Lollipop, the first update to the latest version of Android.
Users of Nexus 7 (2013 model), Nexus 9, and Nexus 10 devices can now download the update from Google.
You can also find the source for the Android Open Source Project version here.
There is no official list of changes, but users …

Google is to splash the cash in The Netherlands to build a new €600 million (more than $US770 million) data centre behind the dike.
To be located in Eemshaven, the Chocolate Factory attributes the choice of location to the stability of Dutch energy supplies, according to Reuters.
Google already operates DCs in Ireland, Finland …

The president and managing partner of Google Ventures, Bill Maris, has stated that it is possible to live to be 500, according to a lengthy and uncritical article appearing on the cover of the April 2015 issue of Bloomberg Markets.
And not only is it possible to live to be 500, but Google is investing in the companies that will …